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Engineering, Building, and Architecture

Not many museums collect houses. The National Museum of American History has four, as well as two outbuildings, 11 rooms, an elevator, many building components, and some architectural elements from the White House. Drafting manuals are supplemented by many prints of buildings and other architectural subjects. The breadth of the museum's collections adds some surprising objects to these holdings, such as fans, purses, handkerchiefs, T-shirts, and other objects bearing images of buildings.

The engineering artifacts document the history of civil and mechanical engineering in the United States. So far, the Museum has declined to collect dams, skyscrapers, and bridges, but these and other important engineering achievements are preserved through blueprints, drawings, models, photographs, sketches, paintings, technical reports, and field notes.

Four men dressed in lab coats in a laboratory. To the left is a fume cabinet. Two of the men are seated at a table with glass tubes in clamps. "310-B" is written on the door behind them. No ink on negative. "2 AGFA SAFETY FILM" edge imprint.

Cite as

Scurlock Studio Records, ca. 1905-1994, Archives Center, National Museum of American History

Group of men working in a laboratory in groups. One group is working with a coil in solution, whilst another is working with a battery. The man in the front left is smoking a pipe. No ink on negative. "2 AGFA SAFETY FILM" edge imprint.

Cite as

Scurlock Studio Records, ca. 1905-1994, Archives Center, National Museum of American History

Ten men standing at benches working on experiments in a laboratory. No ink on negative. "3 AGFA SAFETY FILM" edge imprint. No Scurlock number.

Publications

Used April 27, 2010, on the Smithsonian Photographic Initiative web site, "click! photography changes everything" (http://click.si.edu) to accompany contributor Jeremy Wolfe's (a professor at Harvard School of Medicine who investigates visual attention) story, which reflects on how photography changes what and how much we remember

Cite as

Scurlock Studio Records, ca. 1905-1994, Archives Center, National Museum of American History